Founding Flight Software Engineer for Subscale VTOLs

Vight; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental included

Job summary

Vight is building private use eVTOLs and is assembling a founding team in San Francisco to own flight control and flight software architecture for subscale prototypes. You will oversee end-to-end behavior from the flight stack to simulation, logs, and configuration discipline, shaping a safety-critical software stack for future MOSAIC vehicles.

In the early weeks you will own the loop that makes the Part 107 prototype fly safely, iterating on flight stack changes, instrumentation, log review,

Qualifications

• Have done exceptionally hard things on UAV, aircraft, or robotics programs at high velocity: first flights, DARPA programs, or early-stage startups where you had significant ownership of controls or flight software.
• Have transition vehicle experience, e.g. with tailsitter, tilt-wing, or tilt-rotor aircraft, or demonstrate ability to reason clearly about the GNC challenges with these aircraft designs.
• Have experience with custom or proprietary flight stacks or heavily modifying ArduPilot / PX4.
• Are hands-on and excited to own architecture, iterate quickly, and learn from flight data.
• Have personally designed flight control laws, modified flight software or parameters, stood up sims, and been in the control room or field during flight test.
• Are skilled in controller design, system ID from flight data, log review, and real-time filters or estimators like EKF.

Responsibilities

• Build on the existing plant model, simulation, and replay framework, including ML-assisted tooling and automated testing where it can accelerate development.
• Own the near-term subscale flight software loop: from model assumptions to firmware/configuration to field evidence.
• Longer term, you will define the flight control architecture for hover through cruise, including control allocation, envelope protection, stability shaping, degraded cases, and high level safety functions.
• Coordinate with structures on dynamics, avionics on sensor performance and logging, and propulsion on motor response, control allocation, and avoiding actuator or torque saturation.
• Close the loop during fast-paced flight testing: isolate unexpected vehicle behavior, separate GNC issues from hardware or instrumentation issues, and turn the result into the next change.

Job description

Vight is building private use eVTOLs and is assembling a founding team in San Francisco to own flight control and flight software architecture for subscale prototypes. You will oversee end-to-end behavior from the flight stack to simulation, logs, and configuration discipline, shaping a safety-critical software stack for future MOSAIC vehicles.

In the early weeks you will own the loop that makes the Part 107 prototype fly safely, iterating on flight stack changes, instrumentation, log review,